Memeorandum

December 09, 2012

Trouble In Paradise, Zero Dark Thirty Edition

Frank Bruni of the Times warns us that the upcoming movie about the killing of Bin Laden won't be the Obama-booster Hollywood seemed destined to make:

I’M betting that Dick Cheney will love the new movie “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Who could have predicted that? Hollywood, after all, is supposed to be a
West Coast annex of the Democratic National Committee, and the makers
of this gripping thriller, about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, were
expected to repay the Obama administration for its indulgence of them
with a tribute to the current president’s wisdom and grit.

But the movie of the year is also the political conundrum of the year, a
far, far cry from the rousing piece of pro-Obama propaganda that some
conservatives feared it would be. “Zero Dark Thirty,” which opens in
theaters on Dec. 19 and presents itself as a quasi-journalistic account
of what really happened, gives primary credit for the killing of Bin
Laden to neither the Bush nor the Obama administrations but to one
obsessive C.I.A. analyst whose work spans both presidencies. And it
presents the kind of torture that Cheney advocated — but that President
Obama ended — as something of an information-extracting necessity,
repellent but fruitful.

Even as David Edelstein, the film critic for New York magazine, named “Zero Dark Thirty” the best movie of 2012
in a recent article, he digressed to say that it “borders on the
politically and morally reprehensible,” because it “makes a case for the
efficacy of torture.”

Ooops.

ERRATA: This old post has more background, including the obvious caveats: sources from both Teams Cheney and Obama will promote their own agenda, and the CIA had a bit of an institutional interest in dissuading an Eric Holder prosecution of their interogators.

Comments

Well it's interesting because they seem to conflate the aggressive interrogation of several figures, Ould Slahi, whose client complained to Jess Braven at the Journal, part of the original Hamburg network, KSM, the young lad Quahtani, for whom Durbin cried crocodile tears, it's a detective story, somewhat like the Kingdom, which until the end, was possibly the most accurate of the films of the WOT.

There is serious consideration that the Islamists are so doctrinaire that they can be broken easily using "enhanced interrogation" whereas the guys in the Hanoi Hilton had something other than religious fidelity to keep them in tact - an exceptional love of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Not an insane devotion to a suspect sect of unforgiving Islam.

BTW, Skins score 5 yd pass from RG3 to Josh Morgan.

Hail to the Redskin
Hail Victory
Skins on the warpath
Fight for old DC

One can just imagine the effort that Maya is somewhat like Claire Danes character in Homeland, coming up with these scraps of data,
and the authorities, typified by Pannetta played by 'Tony Soprano' telling her, no we can't use that information, you have to get it another way.

OT, my nephew's company will be hosting JEF Monday, along with their governor---Rick Snyder--who has said he'll be signing the right-to-work legislation passed last Thursday on Tuesday.
Michigan requires a five day wait between vote and signature.

The LIBTARD/COMMIES have co-opted the language.
Farting in church is TORTURE, if they say it is. Scaring someone is torture, if they say it is.
Waterboarding is NOT torture. Looking at Michelle Obama's ass is.

The comments at yahoo were precious.
There should be an entire platoon of people concocting hoaxes like that just so the rest of us can watch condescending twits lording it over the supposed bumpkins among them.

Just awoke, flipped on the Tube for a football game, and caught an ad for a new TV Drama show to premier in January, "The Americans". It is about 2 undercover married Soviet spies living undercover in Washington next door to Clarice and Janet during the Reagan Administration. The Ad shows a nice suburban white house with a huge hammer and sickle painted on it.

I add those in to the new BBC Series I've been watching in my overseas Hotel Rooms, Re-examining Marx "Was Marx Right?", and their new series critical of Capitalism "Why Poverty," and I have to conclude that the new push in on to make any ism other than Capitalism, (ie) Marxism, Socialism, Leninism, Communism, cool.

Hello Van Jones, CNN's new Communist Talking Head. You're getting some very nice media assists in spreading the message from the usual suspects.

Skins lose RG3 in the end of 4th Q behind by 8 pts. Bring in Kurt Cousins and he gets the TD and runs in the 2pt. conversion tying it up with 29 secs to go. What a game. RG3 hurt his leg running and taking heavy tackle. He is now in locker room.

But the Ravens have the ball with some time on the clock but they have decided to run it out. Goes into OT.

daddy,
In case you missed the pronouncement, bubu informed us a thread or two ago that there are no Marxists to be found in public life anywhere in the US.
That they are even discussed at all is merely a ploy by identity conservatives to avoid defending indefensible supply side economics from brilliant critics like him.
Really, he said that. Really.

The White House has the power to temporarily protect taxpayers from middle-class tax hikes even as upper income rates rise if Congress does nothing and all of the Bush-era tax rates expire in January.

Experts and lawmakers alike agree that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has the power to adjust how much is withheld from paychecks for tax purposes — for all taxpayers or just for some.

By doing so, Geithner could ensure paychecks reflect the White House position that wealthier taxpayers with annual income higher than $250,000 see their taxes rise. Geithner at the same time could leave withholding tables where they are for the middle class, ensuring those workers don’t see a higher cut from their paychecks. . . .

And here I thought we fought a Revolution because of "Taxation without Representation." Have at it, King Geithner.

This morning on Face the Nation Major Garrett said he called the WH and asked for an update on the talks about the fiscal cliff. The WH responded that nothing was happening. He then emailed that it the situation was not unlike the Cold War. And the Cold War went on for a very long time. The WH responded: "The Cold War went on until one side realized they could not win.".

This administration treats Assad better than he treats the republicans.

I was worried there for a moment about a push to advance Marxism as the new alternative in the Western World, but am glad to find out I was mistaken. It must simply be a complete coincidence for Nielsen ratings.

BTW, is it possible the stinky CowBoys are going to pull this one out?

Wow, Skins get a great punt return from Brandon Banks and are in FG range for a Sudden Death win. Dallas wins on FG with nothing left coming from 9 pts behind. RG3 back on sideline with knee brace on. If they win its for old Pyrrhus.

Even the Eagles have a chance with 2 secs to go.

Skins win in OT on FG. 31-28.

Hail to the Redskins
Hail Victory
Braves on the warpath
Fight for old DC.

Looks like Eagles are going to win on a last second TD pass from Foles to Macklin. Wild Sunday with 3 last second or OT wins so far.

Doris Kearnes Goodwin (Team Of Rivals) sez that in 1848, the first time Honest Abe and Governor Seward met, was in a Hotel room in Worcester Massachusetts (Cheers!)

"The next night, Seward and Lincoln shared the same room in a Worcester Hotel. "We spent the greater part of the night talking," Seward remembered years later, "I insisting that the time had come for sharp definition of opinion and boldness of utterance." Listening with "a thoughtful air," Lincoln said: "I reckon you are right. We have got to deal with this slavery question, and got to give much more attention to it hereafter than we have been doing."...As the convention drew to a close and the two men went to sleep side by side, they must have presented a comical image---the one nearly a foot longer and a decade younger, Seward's disorderly mass of straw-colored hair on the pillow beside Lincoln's wiry shock of black hair."

That reminded me of Ben Franklin's stint under the covers with John Adam's:

John Adam's Diary: Monday September 9, 1776.:

At [New] Brunswick, but one bed could be procured for Dr. Franklin and me, in a little Chamber little larger than the bed, without a Chimney and with only one small Window. The Window was open, and I, who was an invalid and afraid of the Air in the night, shut it close.

Oh! says Franklin dont shut the Window. We shall be suffocated.

I answered I was afraid of the Evening Air.

Dr. Franklin replied, the Air within this Chamber will soon be, and indeed is now worse than that without Doors: come! open the Window and come to bed, and I will convince you: I believe you are not acquainted with my Theory of Colds.

Opening the Window and leaping into Bed, I said I had read his Letters to Dr. [Samuel] Cooper in which he had advanced, that Nobody ever got cold by going into a cold Church, or any other cold Air: but the Theory was so little consistent with my experience, that I thought it a Paradox: However I had so much curiosity to hear his reasons, that I would run the risque of a cold.

The Doctor then began an harrangue, upon Air and cold and Respiration and Perspiration, with which I was so much amused that I soon fell asleep, and left him and his Philosophy together: but I believe they were equally sound and insensible, within a few minutes after me, for the last Words I heard were pronounced as if he was more than half asleep. . . ."

I do recall that after the Battle Of Monmouth New Jersey, General Nathaniel Greene (I think it was him) went to consult with the exhausted General, but decided not to disturb him after seeing Washington and Lafayette asleep on the ground: "they slept together under one cloak among the dead."

Not that there's anything wrong with that of course, but can anyone think of any other instances of our famous American Leaders racking out together?

And dutifully I note on pg 333 of the soft cover adition of Mayer's 'the Dark Side, Mayer notes the conscious stricken cries of Slahi's counsel,
Couch, maybe he didn't know his client was the link man to the Jarrah-Atta cell, who was aware of Al Kuwaiti, as was Mohammed Quahtani,

I'm overdosing on liberal pontificating this evening. Trapped in the land of big experts. No questions, just droning on & on & on & on & on.... UGH. I had to sneak off upstairs to the computer for awhile.

can anyone think of any other instances of our famous American Leaders racking out together?

I suspect most of them did back in the day. Rooms were scarce and probably expensive and no one thought twice about it. I know Lincoln regularly shared a bed with his fellow lawyers as they went around Illinois in the circuit court system. And much as the queer studies activists would like to claim otherwise, it doesn't seem that there was any hanky-panky.

It is the tyranny of presentism, I brought up around the time, that daddy brought up 'Team of Rivals' that David Donald essay, about Lincoln's press coverage being extraordinarily negative, until the day he died at Ford's Theatre, rather unlike Kennedy's treatment a century before.

Chinese-owned auto-parts company Wanxiang America Corp. won the bidding for A123 Systems Inc., the government-backed battery maker that has yet to turn a profit, at a bankruptcy auction that ended early Saturday according to a person familiar with the matter.

Wanxiang's winning bid, which the person estimated at between $250 million and $260 million, topped a combined offer from Milwaukee-based auto-parts manufacturer Johnson Controls Inc. and electronics maker NEC Corp. of Japan. The German electronics giant Siemens AG also submitted a qualified bid at the auction, which kicked off Thursday at the Chicago office of Latham & Watkins, the law firm representing A123 in its Chapter 11 case.

I'm surprised -- I figured Johnson Controls would win this. So much for the peanut gallery!

Apple and Google are indeed teaming up to make a bigger offer to buy Kodak's digital imaging patents, according to sources speaking to Bloomberg. The companies reportedly joined their two independent consortiums [sic] — which had been competing against each other for the portfolio earlier this year—in order to collectively put together more than $500 million in order to win the ~1,100 patents.

...

But now, the two teams teamed up together so they can pool their money to buy the patents once and for all. The entire group goes beyond just Apple and Google—it reportedly includes other companies like Microsoft, Intellectual Ventures (the mysterious parent-seeming company of Lodsys, the firm suing independent app developers), another patent holding firm named RPX Corp., and "Asian makers of Google’s Android phones," according to the sources.

From arstechnica. Business arrangements can lead to strange bedfellows.

From my earlier link to Geitner being able to arbitrarily order how much is automatically withheld from any individuals paycheck:

Experts and lawmakers alike agree that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has the power to adjust how much is withheld from paychecks for tax purposes — for all taxpayers or just for some.

My question. If he has such an amazing power, why then could he not order 50 or 60 or 80 or whatever percent withholding of everybody making over such and such an amount (ie) Say $200,000 for instance), under the same nutty, arbitrary "pay no attention to the Law" rule.

I can see opponents to this argument saying he cannot withhold more than the current maximum Tax amount. That sounds logical in a sane world, but since in this world he does not have to stay in accord with the law in regard to whatever the current required amount happens to be, it seems to me he is already essentially acting outside the Law, and since our Supreme Court is currently unable to recognize what the hell is a Tax and what ain't, I think he'd have a good chance of mandating whatever withholding he wanted regardless, and a decent chance of winning if and when that decision got to the bozo's we currently have acting as Supreme's.

Re: Narciso's 08:14, to a PJ Media guy properly irate about our US Public schools booting out some Classic American Lit in favor of Govt issued manuals about housing insulation and plants.

Just how is it going to help students to develop an ability to write if they have never read the achingly beautiful prose of Melville, the spare but rich dialogue of Hemmingway, the storytelling of Hawthorne? It is impossible to learn how to write well unless you can recognize what is good writing and what is schlock. I guarantee you’re not going to be able to discern what is good art by reading an EPA manual.

Brings to mind Mark Twain's famous quote: "A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read."

I would simply modify that to: "A person who doesn't read anything decent has no advantage over one who can't read anything decent."

(Actually the guy who doesn't have to go to school to read EPA manuals on home insulation probably has an advantage over the poor bastard who does have to read it--at least in terms of less stultifying brain drudgery and less brainwashing.)

Remember Jefferson's impassioned comments that about every generation or 2 a revolution needed to occur to keep the system honest? I wonder if he would have already called for an armed insurrection.

She really is a wonderful nice gal, and when not pouring me a cold one or joking about math or whatever she is reading, she is e-mailing many of her hundreds of beloved customers pithy little stories and sayings to buttress her strong Christian Faith. There are a surprising number of Christians in Taipei, and she's about as good a one as you'll ever find.

She will be excited to hear that it is being passed on. Many thanks for that.

In the spirit of holiday math, here's one from the archives. Don't know if it'll translate to Taipei, but here goes:

There's nothing foreordained about the decimal number system we're used to. We can write a number like '1809' and know what each digit means - 1 thousand, 8 hundred, (0 tens), 9 - just because that's the number system that's most common. There are others.

There's binary, for instance, where instead of having digits represent powers of ten (like ones, tens, hundreds, etc) they represent powers of two.

101 in binary means 1 four, 0 twos, and 1. If you want to convert from some number system to decimal, just add up the digits and indicate the base number somehow.

101(BIN) = 1*4+0*2+1*1 = 5(DEC).

You can do the same thing with the octal system, where each digit represents a power of 8.

Daddy, as I understand it the level of withholding, or not withholding, becomes moot at the end of the year, when the account must be settled. Back when I was subject to withholding it was perfectly lawful to direct that your withholding be calculated as if you had, say, 17 dependents. But when you filed your return, you had to declare the actual number of dependents, with the result that you owed a lot of money. So I don't see why this "power," assuming the Secretary has it, affects anyone at all when the dust settles.

"I don't see any use in having a uniform and arbitrary way of spelling words. We might as well make all clothes alike and cook all dishes alike. Sameness is tiresome; variety is pleasing. I have a correspondent whose letters are always a refreshment to me, there is such a breezy unfettered originality about his orthography. He always spells "Kow" with a large "K." Now that is just as good as to spell it with a small one. It is better. It gives the imagination a broader field, a wider scope. It suggests to the mind a grand, vague, impressive new kind of a cow."

"The following story is told about Bertrand Russell (1872-1970). The subject once claimed that, given 1 + 1 = 1, he could prove any other statement. One day some wise guy said to him, "OK. Prove that you are the Pope." The great sage thought for a while and then proclaimed, "I am one. The Pope is one. Therefore the Pope and I are one."

There has been a historic shift in the UN climate talks in Qatar, with the prospect of rich nations having to compensate poor nations for losses due to climate change.

... but if you look at the Copenhagen Accords, it was more than compensation for damage from climate change.
The Copenhagen Accords are an international industrial policy statement. The compensation is really a payoff to the Third world not to develop and challenge the First and Second World’s position. To prove this point, look at who doesn’t want to sign aboard .. China and India.
The problem is that there will never be enough money to keep the Third World as the Third World .. to keep them undeveloped.
Doha has proven this point.

If so, then according to this Breitbart story, The Fed's consider that "a Tax Loophole."

Let's say you own a home and your mortgage is $1,000 a month. If, however, you instead rented the home from a landlord your rent, let's say, would be $2,000 a month. To the mandarins at the IRS, you are "earning" an implied $1,000 a month because you own and not rent, and that "value" should be added to your taxable income. If you own your home out-right and don't have a mortgage at all, you would be "earning" $2,000 a month which the IRS thinks should be added to your taxable income.

Of course Daddy. It is a logical consequence of "you didn't build that!" The government owns everything, we are serfs, and we should just shut up and let our elite tell us what to do. Time to invest in "activated" lead.